African Hunting Spear?

[Aragorn243]

I'm not planning to put a bright finish on it, just get the rust off. You do make a good point however as it appears that there is black paint or some other substance on it that is mostly worn off. The metal itself appears to be blackened somehow as well so I'm just going to be careful and get the orange off. I was going to do it today but our yard sale morning turned into an antiquing day near an amusement park we have season passes, food passes and drink passes at so we spent the second half of the day there eating too much, getting tired feet walking through the zoo and riding a couple of rides. Hershey Park for any that have heard of it. Pretty big in Pennsylvania.

[browningautorifle]

Here's a closer shot of one that hasn't been rusty and has original finish... They're mostly dark from the processing but have silver features. the javelin I showed first was a rust ball because it was hammered from iron ore gathered and forged in the open, then just left for years. It's lower grade material. I promise the guys that made it didn't have boot polish or likely boots...it's far more crude than anything else here. Except maybe the Indian Bulova or the Solomon Island arrow heads.

[Flying10uk]

Hershey Park for any that have heard of it.

Yes, the place where the largest autojumble in the world is held.

[Aragorn243]

My cleaning this morning ended pretty quick. As I started, it became apparent that marks that I had assumed were storage transfer marks were actually white paint outlining the spear head and going down each side of the main twisted shaft. The inside of the head and the shalf down to where the twisting ends is painted black. There is a small amount of a bright red which continues the white down to the end of the front shaft and the base of both the top and bottom shafts where they attach to the wood are a very dark red. The notches cut into the base also have this dark red and the remainder of the bottom shaft is black.

So I just wiped it down with some oil to hopefully stop new rust development.

The red is very difficult to see, it's more that you can see it ISN'T black The white and black you can see in the photos if you look close.

[Surpmil]

The trouble with having "the sheen of [your] spears like stars on the sea" is that in sunshine enemies and animals see you coming and either get ready or get lost

The "native iron" notation on your spear Sapper implies that it was made from iron smelted locally rather than imported iron. The 1930s would seem pretty late for that, but who knows, maybe local iron was preferred for some muti-type reasons?

[browningautorifle]

So I just wiped it down with some oil to hopefully stop new rust development.

The one I cleaned had nothing redeeming, was complete rust. It had been hammered out of iron ore chunks and the shaft had been broken to pack it in a suitcase or luggage. I had to join the shaft and clean to make it even display. There's a video of a tribal blacksmith making a spear from scratch and all the steps they use. They start by gathering the iron ore to making the furnace from mud thatch and how they construct the bellows...hammer the ore on a boulder using another rock. That's why they might look crude compared to my others that have been made by modern blacksmith tools. Your markings will refer to the place and people producing it. Show the folk over on the other site...